Dweller - Jeff Strand [8]
DANGER. KEEP OUT. promised something even more exciting.
What could it be? An abandoned mine? An old bunker filled with explosives?
Toby slowly stepped through the clearing, which was a circle about fifty feet in diameter, watching his feet to make sure he didn’t walk in a bear trap or something like that. The clearing itself seemed to be devoid of anything interesting. He walked around the perimeter, then walked across it several times, but didn’t see anything that looked even remotely worthy of the sign.
They wouldn’t put out a sign like that for no reason. There had to be something. Maybe it was the former site of a horrible plague.
No, even in ancient times, people probably took stronger precautions against the spread of a plague than simply putting out a wooden sign.
He kept searching the area, but there was nothing. What a rip-off.
What if the sign had been moved? He just needed to keep searching. He continued to walk around the area, not going quite so far as to crawl around on his hands and knees, but making sure he was searching thoroughly. If there were something great out here, he was going to find it.
About five minutes beyond the sign, he found a path. A narrow uphill path that looked recently used.
Well, maybe not. There weren’t any distinct footprints or broken branches or anything specific to indicate that somebody might have recently taken a stroll around here. Still, Toby had a weird feeling, something he couldn’t quite pinpoint, that he wasn’t the only person to have used this path today.
This meant that, as a rational, intelligent human being, his best bet was to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.
Instead, he stepped onto the path and followed it.
CHAPTER THREE
The path ended at the entrance to a cave. A cave! Toby knew there were caves out in this forest somewhere, but there weren’t supposed to be any within walking distance of his house. How could something like this have eluded him all this time? He could’ve been hanging out in a cave for years!
There were some rusted metal hinges—almost worn down to dust—on the left side of the cave entrance, but the door itself was long gone. There was, however, a large pile of brush in front of it. Had the wind blown it there, or had somebody put it there? It wasn’t a very good camouflage. Must’ve been put there by Mother Nature. The cave door wasn’t a perfect rectangle, but it was obviously man-made, or at least an enhancement of a natural entrance.
Toby pushed the brush out of the way and peered inside. Totally dark.
He removed his backpack, reached inside, and dug around until he found the small penlight he used for reading. He turned it on and shone it inside the entrance. It didn’t help much, but at least it might keep him from walking into an open pit and plummeting 800 feet to his death.
He replaced his backpack and stepped through the entrance. He immediately recoiled—it smelled awful in here. Not like something had died, but like something had failed to empty about six months’ worth of garbage. Noxious. He took one more step forward and shone the light around.
The rock ceiling was low enough that he could scrape against it with the tips of his fingers if he reached up. The cave was extremely narrow, not quite claustrophobic, but he wouldn’t be able to lie sideways on the floor. He couldn’t see the far end, so he continued walking forward, very slowly and carefully.
He bet that Larry, Nick, and Frank wouldn’t have the courage to walk into an unexplored cave like this. Those babies would be standing at the entrance, whining, “There might be bats inside! There might be bats inside!” Losers.
A few more steps in, his light washed against the far wall. More rock. Nothing particularly interesting about it. Toby ran the beam of his flashlight around the perimeter, and there was…nothing.
So